Crab Orchard Review Vol. 12, No. 2, our

Heather E. Goodman
over. Coolly, he holds the fork and grabs the turtle’s head, so big he
barely gets his whole hand around it and pulls it off. A little bit of the
innards fall to the ground. It’s not funny again.
“I’ll start a gut bucket,” he says and goes to the shed, still holding
the turtle head.
When he returns, he says, “We need to wait while the body drains.”
I nod and stoop, looking at the head against the white plastic
bucket. I use my shirt to wipe the sweat from my face and am surprised
to see the dirt smudges that cling. I reach down and touch the turtle
head with a finger. It is cool, scaly. Its beak is tucked into the edge of
the bucket. Gingerly, with thumb and forefinger, I lift the head. The
beak is chipped on the left side, but it is hard, steel. A turtle this size
could take an adult duck. I study its nostrils, oddly dainty. It reeks.
“You getting to be your dad?” Will smiles teasingly.
I stand and stretch, reach to my belly and scratch. I’m relieved to
have this part over with. I head into the house for water. “Need a beer?”
Will shakes his head, but I know that’s for me. We always had
beers with Dad at this point—a toast to the end of a prehistoric life.
I walk into the cool of Dad’s house and smell his pipe and wonder
how much longer it will last. Nearly a week, and it doesn’t seem to have
faded a bit. When it does, I’ll open the tobacco pouch and breathe in
the sweet cherry bark smell, just the way he used to before he filled his
pipe. I go to the fridge and open it, letting the cool air escape to my
skin and chill the sweat there. I grab a can of beer and press it to my
cheek, look out the window at the tree branches wilting in the sun.
Church light filters through the canopy of trees into the simple
cabin. There are only a few purple wisteria petals strewn about now.
Every morning the dripping flower smell rode in on the breeze, I was
forced out of bed, barely having slept, worrying about Dad, and then
puked my guts out in the outhouse, if I could make it that far. Morning
sickness. Mourning sickness. Either way it should have been over at
three months, and still now into my sixth month, new, sharp smells,
make me vomit.
One of the first mornings after I told Will I was pregnant,
he reached over to my stomach, flat but stirring. Operating of its own
accord, without my permission. “What’s it feel like?”
“Nothing. I don’t feel anything.”
“Is that bad?”
“I don’t know.”
Crab Orchard Review ◆ 49